Information Technology is a great field. With technology advancing at the speed of sound, there is never a period when IT becomes boring, or hits an intellectual wall. New devices, new software, more network bandwidth, and new opportunities to make all this technology do great things for our professional and private lives.

Or, it becomes a frightening professional and intellectual cyclone which threatens to make our jobs obsolete, or diluted due to business units accessing IT resources via a web page and credit card, bypassing the IT department entirely.

One of the biggest challenges IT managers have traditionally encountered is the need for providing both process, as well as utility to end users and supported departments or divisions within the organization. It is easy to get tied down in a virtual mountain of spreadsheets, trouble tickets, and unhappy users while innovation races past.

The Role of IT in Future Organizations

In reality, the technology component of IT is the easy part. If, for example, I decide that it is cost-effective to transition the entire organization to a Software as a Service (SaaS) application such as MS 365, it is a pretty easy business case to bring to management.

But more questions arise, such as does MS 365 give business users within the organization sufficient utility, and creative tools, to help solve business challenges and opportunities, or is it simply a new and cool application (in the opinion of the IT guys…) that IT guys find interesting?

Bridging the gap between old IT and the new world does not have to be too daunting. The first step is simply understanding and accepting the fact internal data center are going away in favor of virtualized cloud-enabled infrastructure. In the long term Software as a Service and Platform as a Service-enabled information, communication, and service utilities will begin to eliminate even the most compelling justifications for physical or virtual servers.

End user devices become mobile, with the only real requirement being a high definition display, input device, and high speed network connection (not this does not rely on “Internet” connections). Applications and other information and decision support resources are accessed someplace in the “cloud,” relieving the user from the burden of device applications and storage.

The IT department is no longer responsible for physical infrastructure

If we consider disciplines such as TOGAF (The open Group Architecture Framework), ITIL (Service Delivery and Management Framework), or COBIT (Governance and Holistic Organizational Enablement), a common theme emerges for IT groups.

IT organizations must become full members of an organization’s business team

If we consider the potential of systems integration, interoperability, and exploitation of large data (or “big data”) within organization’s, and externally among trading partners, governments, and others, the need for IT managers and professionals to graduate from the device world to the true information management world becomes a great career and future opportunity.

But this requires IT professionals to reconsider those skills and training needed to fully become a business team member and contributor to an organization’s strategic vision for the future. Those skills include enterprise architecture, governance modeling, data analytics, and a view of standards and interoperability of data. The value of a network routing certification, data center facility manager, or software installer will edge towards near zero within a few short years.

Harsh, but true. Think of the engineers who specialized in digital telephone switches in the 1990s and early 2000s. They are all gone. Either retrained, repurposed, or unemployed. The same future is hovering on the IT manager’s horizon.

So the call to action is simple. If you are a mid-career IT professional, or new IT professional just entering the job market, prepare yourself for a new age of IT. Try to distance yourself from being stuck in a device-driven career path, and look at engaging and preparing yourself for contributing to the organization’s ability to fully exploit information from a business perspective, an architectural perspective, and fully indulge in a rapidly evolving and changing information services world.

This week brought another great consulting gig, working with old friends and respected colleagues. The challenge driving the consultation was brainstorming a new service for their company, and how best to get it into operation.

The new service vision was pretty good. The service would fill a hole, or shortfall in the industry which would better enable their customers to compete in markets both in the US and abroad. However the process of planning and delivering this service, well, simply did not exist.

The team’s sense of urgency to deliver the service was high, based on a perception if they did not move quickly, then they would suffer an opportunity loss while competitors moved quickly to fill the service need themselves.

While it may have been easy to “jump on the bandwagon” and share the team’s enthusiasm, they lacked several critical components of delivering a new service, which included:

No specific product or service definition

No, even high level, market analysis or survey

No cost analysis or revenue projection

No risk analysis

No high level implementation plan or schedule

“We have great ideas from vendors, and are going to try and put together a quick pilot test as quickly as possible. We are trying to gather a few of our customers to participate right now” stated one of the team.

At that point, reluctantly, I had to put on the brakes. While not making any attempt to dampen the team’s enthusiasm, to promote a successful service launch I forced them to consider additional requirements, such as:

The need to build a business case

The need for integration of the service into existing back office systems, such as inventory, book-to-bank, OSS, management and monitoring, finance and billing, executive dashboards (KPIs, service performance, etc.)

Staffing and training requirements

Options of in-sourcing, outsourcing, or partnering to deliver the service

Developing RFPs (even simple RFPs) to help evaluate vendor options

and a few other major items

“That just sounds like too much work. If we need to go through all that, we’ll never deliver the service. Better to just work with a couple vendors and get it on the street.”

I should note the service would touch many, many people in the target industry, which is very tech-centric. Success or failure of the service could have a major impact on the success or failure of many in the industry.

Being a card-carrying member of the enterprise architecture cult, and a proponent of other IT-related frameworks such as ITIL, COBIT, Open FAIR, and other business modeling, there are certainly bound to be conflicts between following a very structured approach to building business services, and the need for agile creativity and innovation.

In this case, asking the team to indulge me for a few minutes while I mapped out a simple, structured approach to developing and delivering the envisioned service. By using simplified version of the TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM), and adding a few lines related to standards and service development methodology, such as the vision –> AS-IS –> gap analysis –> solutions development model, it did not take long for the team to reconsider their aggressive approach.

When preparing a chart of timelines using the “TOGAF Light,” or EA framework, the timelines were oddly similar to the aggressive approach. The main difference being at the end of the EA approach the service not only followed a very logical, disciplined, measurable, governable, and flexible service.

Sounds a bit utopian, but in reality we were able to get to the service delivery with a better product, without sacrificing any innovation, agility, or market urgency.

This is the future of IT. As we continue to move away from the frenzy of service deliveries of the Internet Age, and begin focusing on the business nature, including role IT plays in critical global infrastructures, the disciplines of following product and service development and delivery will continue to gain importance.

Is there a point where business can safely assume they have hit the limit of what traditional IT organizations have to offer? In an Internet and data driven world, does IT simply lack the agility and depth needed to fulfill business requirements and need for innovation?

Parts of cloud computing have chimed a loud and painful wake up call for many IT managers. Even at the most simple level, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), it might be fair to say this is simply a utility to accelerate data center decommissioning, and the process of physically decoupling underlying compute, storage, and network infrastructure from the business.

Due to a lack of PaaS and SaaS interface and building block standards, we still have a long ways to go before we can effectively call either utilities, or truly serve the needs of interoperability and systems integration.

Of course this idea is not new. Negroponte kicked off the idea in his great view of the future in the “Big Switch,” with a lot of great analogies about compute, network, and storage capacity as a modern day adaptation of the electrical grid.

We like to look at the analogy of roads (won’t look at water today, but the analogy still applies). Roads are built using standards. In the US the Department of Transportation establishes the need, and construction standards for Interstate Highways, and US highways. The states establish standards and requirements for state roads, and county / local governments establish standards for everything else.

The roads are standard. We know what to expect when driving on an Interstate Highway. Whether it be bridge height, lane sizing, on / off ramps, or even rest stops – it is hard to be surprised when driving the Interstate Highway system.

However the highway system does not unnecessarily inhibit development of vehicles which use the highways – there are hundreds of different makes, models, and sizes of vehicles on the road, and all use the same basic infrastructure.

Getting back to cloud computing, to make our IaaS a true utility, we need to ensure interoperability and portability within the IaaS underlying technologies, and allow for true on-demand portability of the physical infrastructure, management systems, provisioning systems, and billing systems. Just like with the electrical grid. And standards much like the highway system, with the flexibility to support predictable, innovative ideas.

Once we have removed the burden of underlying physical IT infrastructure from our planning model, we can focus our energy on higher levels of utility, including PaaS and SaaS.

Enterprise Architecture frameworks, such as TOGAF, promote the use of Architecture Building Blocks (ABB) and Solution Building Blocks (SBB). Where ABBs may define global, industry, and local standards, SBBs provide definition for solutions which are specific to a project, and do not normally have either standards or other reusable components to draw from. However, development of SBBs should still acknowledge and have a design which will support either an existing standard, or broader development of new standard interfaces in the future.

This includes the most important component of open, standard, and reusable interfaces (APIs) which support service-orientation, interoperability, and portability of data. Which may also be considered characteristics of the future PaaS and SaaS utilities. Or in more simple terms, edging closer to the death of proprietary data or physical interfaces and functionality.

Now a reminder – at this level we are still striving to create utilities which will ultimately reduce or eliminate our need for specialized IT. Yes, there are exceptions where specific equipment interfaces are unique to a technology, such as rock crushers in the mining industry. However, for example, we are still able to conduct agile business on a global scale with all our customers, competitors, suppliers, and vendors all using compatible email.

That is the objective, to make the underlying infrastructure, including much of PaaS and SaaS, standard, and serve he needs of business innovation, without the danger of being inhibited by proprietary and non-standard or compatible interfaces.

Build a business on innovative ideas, create competitive or unique selling points and products, focus energy on developing those innovations, and relieve yourselves of the burden resulting from carrying excessive and unproductive IT infrastructure below the business.

The scenario is a data center, late on a Saturday evening. A telecom distribution system fails, and operations staff are called in from their weekend to quickly find the problem and restore operations as quickly as possible.

As time goes on, many customers begin to call in, open trouble tickets, upset at systems outages and escalating customer disruptions.

The team spends hours trying to fix a rectifier providing DC power to a main telecommunications distribution switch, and start by replacing each systems component one-by-one hoping to find the guilty part. The team grows very frustrated due to not only fatigue, but also their failure in being able to s0lve the problem. After many hours the team finally realizes there is no issue with either the telecom switch, or rectifier supplying DC power to the switch. What could the problem be?

Finally, after many hours of troubleshooting, chasing symptoms, and hit / miss component replacements, an electrician discovers there is a panel circuit that has failed due to many years of misuse (for those electrical engineers it was actually a circuit that oxidized and shorted due to “over-amping” the circuit – without preventive maintenance or routine checks).

The incident highlighted a reality – the organization working on the problem had very little critical thinking or problem solving skills. They chased each obvious symptom, but never really addressed or successfully identified the underlying problem. Great technicians, poor critical thinkers. And a true story.

While this incident was a data center-related trouble shooting fail, we frequently fail to use good critical thinking in not only trouble shooting, but also developing opportunities and solutions for our business users and customers.

A few years ago I took a break from the job and spent some time working on personal development. In addition to collecting certifications in TOGAF, ITIL, and other aerchitecture-related subjects I added a couple of additional classes, including Kepner-Tregoe (K-T) and Kepner-Fourie (K-F) Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Courses.

Not bad schools of thought, and a good refresher course reminding me of those long since forgotten systems management skills learned in graduate school – heck, nearly 30 years ago.

Here is the problem: IT systems and business use of technologies have rapidly developed during the past 10 years, and that rate of change appears to be accelerating. Processes and standards developed 10, 15, or 20 years ago are woefully inadequate to support much of our technology and business-related design, development, and operations. Tacit knowledge, tacit skills, and gut feelings cannot be relied on to correctly identify and solve problems we encounter in our fast-paced IT world.

Keep in mind, this discussion is not only related to problem solving, but also works just as well when considering new product or solution development for new and emerging business opportunities or challenges.

Critical Thinking forces us to know what a problem (or opportunity) is, know and apply the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning, identify premises and conclusions, good and bad arguments, and acknowledge issue descriptions and explanations (Erlandson).

Critical Thinking “religions” such as Kepner-Fourie (K-F) provide a process and model for solving problems. Not bad if you have the time to create and follow heavy processes, or even better can automate much of the process. However even studying extensive system like K-T and K-F will continue to drive the need for establishing an appropriate system for responding to events.

Regardless of the approach you may consider, repeated exposure to critical thinking concepts and practice will force us to intellectually step away from chasing symptoms or over-reliance on tacit knowledge (automatic thinking) when responding to problems and challenges.

For IT managers, think of it as an intellectual ITIL Continuous Improvement Cycle – we always need to exercise our brains and thought process. Status quo, or relying on time-honored solutions to problems will probably not be sufficient to bring our IT organizations into the future. We need to continue ensuring our assumptions are based on facts, and avoid undue influence – in particular by vendors, to ensure our stakeholders have confidence in our problem or solution development process, and we have a good awareness of business and technology transformations impacting our actions.

In addition to those courses and critical thinking approaches listed above, exposure and study of those or any of the following can only help ensure we continue to exercise and hone our critical thinking skills.

A3 Management

Toyota Kata

PDSA (Plan-Do-Adjust-Study)

And lots of other university or related courseware. For myself, I keep my interest alive by reading an occasional eBook (Such as “How to Think Clearly, A Guide to Critical Thinking” by Doug Erlandson – great to read during long flights), and Youtube videos.

As IT professionals we have been overwhelmed with different standards for each component of architecture, service delivery, governance, security, and operations. Not only does IT need to ensure technical training and certification, but it is also desired to pursue certifications in ITIL, TOGAF, COBIT, PMP, and a variety of other frameworks – at a high cost in both time and money.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an IT framework or reference architecture which brings all the important components of each standard or recommendation into a single model which focuses on the most important aspect of each existing model?

The Open Group is well-known for publishing TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework), in addition to a variety of other standards and frameworks related to Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), security, risk, and cloud computing. In the past few years, recognizing the impact of broadband, cloud computing, SOAs, and need for a holistic enterprise architecture approach to business and IT, publishing many common-sense, but powerful recommendations such as:

TOGAF 9.1

Open FAIR (Risk Analysis and Assessment)

SOCCI (Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure)

Cloud Computing

Open Enterprise Security Architecture

Document Interchange Reference Model (for interoperability)

and others.

The open Group’s latest project intended to streamline and focus IT systems development is called the “IT4IT” Reference Architecture. While still in the development, or “snapshot” phase, IT4IT is surprisingly easy to read, understand, and most importantly logical.

“The IT Value Chain and IT4IT Reference Architecture represent the IT service lifecycle in a new and powerful way. They provide the missing link between industry standard best practice guides and the technology framework and tools that power the service management ecosystem. The IT Value Chain and IT4IT Reference Architecture are a new foundation on which to base your IT operating model. Together, they deliver a welcome blueprint for the CIO to accelerate IT’s transition to becoming a service broker to the business.” (Open Group’s IT4IT Reference Architecture, v 1.3)

The IT4IT Reference Architecture acknowledges changes in both technology and business resulting from the incredible impact Internet and automation have had on both enterprise and government use of information and data. However the document also makes a compelling case that IT systems, theory, and operations have not kept up with either existing IT support technologies, nor the business visions and objectives IT is meant to serve.

IT4IT’s development team is a large, global collaborative effort including vendors, enterprise, telecommunications, academia, and consulting companies. This helps drive a vendor or technology neutral framework, focusing more on running IT as a business, rather than conforming to a single vendor’s product or service. Eventually, like all developing standards, IT4IT may force vendors and systems developers to provide a solid model and framework for developing business solutions, which will support greater interoperability and data sharing between both internal and external organizations.

The visions and objectives for IT4IT include two major components, which are the IT Value Chain and IT4IT Reference Architecture. Within the IT4IT Core are sections providing guidance, including:

IT4IT Abstractions and Class Structures

The Strategy to Portfolio Value Stream

The Requirement to Deploy Value Stream

The Request to Fulfill Value Stream

The Detect to Correct Value Stream

Each of the above main sections have borrowed from, or further developed ideas and activities from within ITIL, COBIT, and TOGAF, but have taken a giant leap including cloud computing, SOAs, and enterprise architecture into the product.

As the IT4IT Reference Architecture is completed, and supporting roadmaps developed, the IT4IT concept will no doubt find a large legion of supporters, as many, if not most, businesses and IT professionals find the certification and knowledge path for ITIL, COBIT, TOGAF, and other supporting frameworks either too expensive, or too time consuming (both in training and implementation).

Take a look at IT4IT at the Open Group’s website, and let us know what you think. Too light? Not needed? A great idea or concept? Let us know.

In 2009 we began consulting jobs with governments in developing countries with the primary objective to consolidate data centers across government ministries and agencies into centralized, high capacity and quality data centers. At the time, nearly all individual ministry or agency data infrastructure was built into either small computers rooms or server closets with some added “brute force” air conditioning, no backup generators, no data back up, superficial security, and lots of other ailments.

The vision and strategy was that if we consolidated inefficient, end of life, and high risk IT infrastructure into a standardized and professionally managed facility, national information infrastructure would not only be more secure, but through standardization, volume purchasing agreements, some server virtualization, and development of broadband infrastructure most of the IT needs of government would be easily fulfilled.

Then of course cloud computing began to mature, and the underlying technologies of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) became feasible. Now, not only were the governments able to decommission inefficient and high-risk IS environments, they would also be able to build virtual data centers with levels of on-demand compute, storage, and network resources. Basic data center replacement.

Even those remaining committed “server hugger” IT managers and fiercely independent governmental organizations cloud hardly argue the benefits of having access to disaster recovery storage capacity though the centralized data center.

As the years passed, and we entered 2014, not only did cloud computing mature as a business model, but senior management began to increase their awareness of various aspects of cloud computing, including the financial benefits, standardization of IT resources, the characteristics of cloud computing, and potential for Platform and Software as a Service (PaaS/SaaS) to improve both business agility and internal decision support systems.

At the same time, information and organizational architecture, governance, and service delivery frameworks such as TOGAF, COBIT, ITIL, and Risk Analysis training reinforced the value of both data and information within an organization, and the need for IT systems to support higher level architectures supporting decision support systems and market interactions (including Government to Government, Business, and Citizens for the public sector) .

2015 will bring cloud computing and architecture together at levels just becoming comprehensible to much of the business and IT world. The open Group has a good first stab at building a standard for this marriage with their Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI). According to the SOCCI standard,

“Infrastructure is a foundational element for enterprise architecture. Infrastructure has been traditionally provisioned in a physical manner. With the evolution of virtualization technologies and application of service-orientation to infrastructure, it can now be offered as a service.

Service-orientation principles originated in the business and application architecture arena. After repeated, successful application of these principles to application architecture, IT has evolved to extending these principles to the infrastructure.”

At first glance the SOCII standard appears to be a document which creates a mapping between enterprise architecture (TOGAF) and cloud computing. At second glance the SOCCI standard really steps towards tightening the loose coupling of standard service-oriented architectures through use of cloud computing tools included with all service models (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS).

The result is an architectural vision which is easily capable of absorbing existing IT requirements, as well as incorporating emerging big data analytics models, interoperability, and enterprise architecture.

Since the early days of 2009 discussion topics with government and enterprise customers have shown a marked transition from simply justifying decommissioning of high risk data centers to how to manage data sharing, interoperability, or the potential for over standardization and other service delivery barriers which might inhibit innovation – or ability of business units to quickly respond to rapidly changing market opportunities.

2015 will be an exciting year for information and communications technologies. For those of us in the consulting and training business, the new year is already shaping up to be the busiest we have seen.

Providing guidance or consulting to organizations on cloud computing topics can be really easy, or really tough. In the past most of the initial engagement was dedicated to training and building awareness with your customer. The next step was finding a high value, low risk application or service that could be moved to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to solve an immediate problem, normally associated with disaster recovery or data backups.

As the years have continued, dynamics changed. On one hand, IT professionals and CIOs began to establish better knowledge of what virtualization, cloud computing, and outsourcing could do for their organization. CFOs became aware of the financial potential of virtualization and cloud computing, and a healthy dialog between IT, operations, business units, and the CFO.

The “Internet Age” has also driven global competition down to the local level, forcing nearly all organizations to respond more rapidly to business opportunities. If a business unit cannot rapidly respond to the opportunity, which may require product and service development, the opportunity can be lost far more quickly than in the past.

In the old days, procurement of IT resources could require a fairly lengthy cycle. In the Internet Age, if an IT procurement cycle takes > 6 months, there is probably little chance to effectively meet the greatly shortened development cycle competitors in other continents – or across the street may be able to fulfill.

With IaaS the procurement cycle of IT resources can be within minutes, allowing business units to spend far more time developing products, services, and solutions, rather than dealing with the frustration of being powerless to respond to short window opportunities. This is of course addressing the essential cloud characteristics of Rapid Elasticity and On-Demand Self-Service.

In addition to on-demand and elastic resources, IaaS has offered nearly all organizations the option of moving IT resources into either public or private cloud infrastructure. This has the benefit of allowing data center decommissioning, and re-commissioning into a virtual environment. The cost of operating data centers, maintaining data centers and IT equipment, and staffing data centers vs. outsourcing that infrastructure into a cloud is very interesting to CFOs, and a major justification for replacing physical data centers with virtual data centers.

The second dynamic, in addition to greater professional knowledge and awareness of cloud computing, is the fact we are starting to recruit cloud-aware employees graduating from universities and making their first steps into careers and workforce. With these “cloud savvy” young people comes deep experience with interoperable data, social media, big data, data analytics, and an intellectual separation between access devices and underlying IT infrastructure.

The Next Step in Cloud Evolution

OK, so we all are generally aware of the components of IaaS, Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Let’s have a quick review of some standout features supported or enabled by cloud:

Increased standardization of applications

Increased standardization of data bases

Federation of security systems (Authentication and Authorization)

Service busses

Development of other common applications (GIS, collaboration, etc.)

Transparency of underlying hardware

Now let’s consider the need for better, real-time, accurate decision support systems (DSS). Within any organization the value of a DSS is dependent on data integrity, data access (open data within/without an organization), and single-source data.

Frameworks for developing an effective DSS are certainly available, whether it is TOGAF, the US Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF), interoperability frameworks, and service-oriented architectures (SOA). All are fully compatible with the tools made available within the basic cloud service delivery models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

The Open Group (same organization which developed TOGAF) has responded with their model of a Cloud Computing Service Oriented Infrastructure (SOCCI) Framework. The SOCCI is identified as the marriage of a Service-Oriented Infrastructure and cloud computing. The SOCCI also incorporates aspects of TOGAF into the framework, which may drive more credibility into a SOCCI architectural development process.

The expected result of this effort is for existing organizations dealing with departmental “silos” of IT infrastructure, data, and applications, a level of interoperability and DSS development based on service-orientation, using a well-designed underlying cloud infrastructure. This data sharing can be extended beyond the (virtual) firewall to others in an organization’s trading or governmental community, resulting in DSS which will become closer and closer to an architecture vision based on the true value of data produced, or made available to an organization.

While we most certainly need IaaS, and the value of moving to virtual data centers is justified by itself, we will not truly benefit from the potential of cloud computing until we understand the potential of data produced and available to decision makers.

The opportunity will need a broad spectrum of contributors and participants with awareness and training in disciplines ranging from technical capabilities, to enterprise architecture, to service delivery, and governance acceptable to a cloud-enabled IT world.

For those who are eagerly consuming training and knowledge in the above skills and knowledge, the future is anything but cloudy. For those who believe in status quo, let’s hope you are close to pension and retirement, as this is your future.

Just finished another frustrating day of consulting with an organization that is convinced technology is going to solve their problems. Have an opportunity? Throw money and computers at the opportunity. Have a technology answer to your process problems? Really?.

The business world is changing. With cloud computing potentially eliminating the need for some current IT roles, such as physical server huggers…, information technology professionals, or more appropriately information and communications technology (ICT) professionals, need to rethink their roles within organizations.

Is it acceptable to simply be a technology specialist, or do ICT professionals also need to be an inherent part of the business process? Yes, a rhetorical question, and any negative answer is wrong. ICT professionals are rapidly being relieved of the burden of data centers, servers (physical servers), and a need to focus on ensuring local copies of MS Office are correctly installed, configured, and have the latest service packs or security patches installed.

You can fight the idea, argue the concept, but in reality cloud computing is here to stay, and will only become more important in both the business and financial planning of future organizations.

Now those copies of MS Office are hosted on MS 365 or Google Docs, and your business users are telling you either quickly meet their needs or they will simply bypass the IT organization and use an external or hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) application – in spite of your existing mature organization and policies.

So what is this TOGAF stuff? Why do we care?

Well…

As it should be, ICT is firmly being set in the organization as a tool to meet business objectives. We no longer have to consider the limitations or “needs” of IT when developing business strategies and opportunities. SaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS) tools are becoming mature, plentiful, and powerful.

Argue the point, fight the concept, but if an organization isn’t at least considering a requirement for data and systems interoperability, the use of large data sets, and implementation of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) they will not be competitive or effective in the next generation of business.

TOGAF, which is “The Open Group Architecture Framework,” brings structure to development of ICT as a tool for meeting business requirements. TOGAF is a tool which will force each stakeholder, including senior management and business unit management, to work with ICT professionals to apply technology in a structured framework that follows the basic:

Develop a business vision

Determine your “AS-IS” environment

Determine your target environment

Perform a gap analysis

Develop solutions to meet the business requirements and vision, and fill the “gaps” between “AS-IS” and “Target”

Implement

Measure

Improve

Re-iterate

Of course TOGAF is a complex architecture framework, with a lot more stuff involved than the above bullets. However, the point is ICT must now participate in the business planning process – and really become part of the business, rather than a vendor to the business.

As a life-long ICT professional, it is easy for me to fall into indulging in tech things. I enjoy networking, enjoy new gadgets, and enjoy anything related to new technology. But it was not until about 10 years ago when I started taking a formal, structured approach to understanding enterprise architecture and fully appreciating the value of service-oriented architectures that I felt as if my efforts were really contributing to the success of an organization.

TOGAF was one course of study that really benefitted my understanding of the value and role IT plays in companies and government organizations. TOGAF provide both a process, and structure to business planning.

You may have a few committed DevOps evangelists who disagree with the structure of TOGAF, but in reality once the “guardrails” are in place even DevOps can be fit into the process. TOGAF, and other frameworks are not intended to stifle innovation – just encourage that innovation to meet the goals of an organization, not the goals of the innovators.

While just one of several candidate enterprise architecture frameworks (including the US Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework/FEAF, Dept. of Defense Architecture Framework /DoDAF), TOGAF is now universally accepted, and accompanying certifications are well understood within government and enterprise.

What’s an IT Guy to Do?

Now we can send the “iterative” process back to the ICT guy’s viewpoint. Much like telecom engineers who operated DMS 250s, 300s, and 500s, the existing IT and ICT professional corps will need to accept the reality they will either need to accept the concept of cloud computing, or hope they are close to retirement. Who needs a DMS250 engineer in a world of soft switches? Who needs a server manager in a world of Infrastructure as a Service? Unless of course you work as an infrastructure technician at a cloud service provider…

Ditto for those who specialize in maintaining copies of MS Office and a local MS Exchange server. Sadly, your time is limited, and quickly running out. Either become a cloud computing expert, in some field within cloud computing’s broad umbrella of components, or plan to be part of the business process. To be effective as a member of the organization’s business team, you will need skills beyond IT – you will need to understand how ICT is used to meet business needs, and the impact of a rapidly evolving toolkit offered by all strata of the cloud stack.

Even better, become a leader in the business process. If you can navigate your way through a TOGAF course and certification, you will acquire a much deeper appreciation for how ICT tools and resources could, and likely should, be planned and employed within an organization to contribute to the success of any individual project, or the re-engineering of ICTs within the entire organization.

The current technology refresh cycle presents many opportunities, and challenges to both organizations and governments. The potential of service-oriented architectures, interoperability, collaboration, and continuity of operations is an attractive outcome of technologies and business models available today. The challenges are more related to business processes and human factors, both of which require organizational transformations to take best advantage of the collaborative environments enabled through use of cloud computing and access to broadband communications.

Gaining the most benefit from planning an interoperable environment for governments and organizations may be facilitated through use of business tools such as cloud computing. Cloud computing and underlying technologies may create an operational environment supporting many strategic objectives being considered within government and private sector organizations.

Reaching target architectures and capabilities is not a single action, and will require a clear understanding of current “as-is” baseline capabilities, target requirements, the gaps or capabilities need to reach the target, and establishing a clear transitional plan to bring the organization from a starting “as-is” baseline to the target goal.

To most effectively reach that goal requires an understanding of the various contributing components within the transformational ecosystem. In addition, planners must keep in mind the goal is not implementation of technologies, but rather consideration of technologies as needed to facilitate business and operations process visions and goals.

Interoperability and Enterprise Architecture

Information technology, particularly communications-enabled technology has enhanced business process, education, and the quality of life for millions around the world. However, traditionally ICT has created silos of information which is rarely integrated or interoperable with other data systems or sources.

As the science of enterprise architecture development and modeling, service-oriented architectures, and interoperability frameworks continue to force the issue of data integration and reuse, ICT developers are looking to reinforce open standards allowing publication of external interfaces and application programming interfaces.

Cloud computing, a rapidly maturing framework for virtualization, standardized data, application, and interface structure technologies, offers a wealth of tools to support development of both integrated and interoperable ICT resources within organizations, as well as among their trading, shared, or collaborative workflow community.

The Institute for Enterprise Architecture Development defines enterprise architecture(EA) as a “complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which acts as a collaboration force between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organization structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks”

ICT, including utilities such as cloud computing, should focus on supporting the holistic objectives of organizations implementing an EA. Non-interoperable or shared data will generally have less value than reusable data, and will greatly increase systems reliability and data integrity.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR)

Recent surveys of governments around the world indicate in most cases limited or no disaster management or continuity of operations planning. The risk of losing critical national data resources due to natural or man-made disasters is high, and the ability for most governments maintain government and citizen services during a disaster is limited based on the amount of time (recovery time objective/RTO) required to restart government services, as well as the point of data restoral (recovery point objective /RPO).

In existing ICT environments, particularly those with organizational and data resource silos, RTOs and RPOs can be extended to near indefinite if both a data backup plan, as well as systems and service restoral resource capacity is not present. This is particularly acute if the processing environment includes legacy mainframe computer applications which do not have a mirrored recovery capacity available upon failure or loss of service due to disaster.

Cloud computing can provide a standards-based environment that fully supports near zero RTO/RPO requirements. With the current limitation of cloud computing being based on Intel-compatible architectures, nearly any existing application or data source can be migrated into a virtual resource pool. Once within the cloud computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment, setting up distributed processing or backup capacity is relatively uncomplicated, assuming the environment has adequate broadband access to the end user and between processing facilities.

Cloud computing-enabled BCDR also opens opportunities for developing either PPPs, or considering the potential of outsourcing into public or commercially operated cloud computing compute, storage, and communications infrastructure. Again, the main limitation being the requirement for portability between systems.

Transformation Readiness

ICT modernization will drive change within all organizations. Transformational readiness is not a matter of technology, but a combination of factors including rapidly changing business models, the need for many-to-many real-time communications, flattening of organizational structures, and the continued entry of technology and communications savvy employees into the workforce.

The potential of outsourcing utility compute, storage, application, and communications will eliminate the need for much physical infrastructure, such as redundant or obsolete data centers and server closets. Roles will change based on the expected shift from physical data centers and ICT support hardware to virtual models based on subscriptions and catalogs of reusable application and process artifacts.

A business model for accomplishing ICT modernization includes cloud computing, which relies on technologies such as server and storage resource virtualization, adding operational characteristics including on-demand resource provisioning to reduce the time needed to procure ICT resources needed to respond to emerging operational or other business opportunities.

IT management and service operations move from a workstation environment to a user interface driven by SaaS. The skills needed to drive ICT within the organization will need to change, becoming closer to the business, while reducing the need to manage complex individual workstations.

IT organizations will need to change, as organizations may elect to outsource most or all of their underlying physical data center resources to a cloud service provider, either in a public or private environment. This could eliminate the need for some positions, while driving new staffing requirements in skills related to cloud resource provisioning, management, and development.

Business unit managers may be able to take advantage of other aspects of cloud computing, including access to on-demand compute, storage, and applications development resources. This may increase their ability to quickly respond to rapidly changing market conditions and other emerging opportunities. Business unit managers, product developers, and sales teams will need to become familiar with their new ICT support tools. All positions from project managers to sales support will need to quickly acquire skills necessary to take advantage of these new tools.

The Role of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a business representation of a large number of underlying technologies. Including virtualization, development environment, and hosted applications, cloud computing provides a framework for developing standardized service models, deployment models, and service delivery characteristics.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a definition of cloud computing accepted throughout the ICT industry.

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.“

While organizations face decisions related to implementing challenges related to developing enterprise architectures and interoperability, cloud computing continues to rapidly develop as an environment with a rich set of compute, communication, development, standardization, and collaboration tools needed to meet organizational objectives.

Data security, including privacy, is different within a cloud computing environment, as the potential for data sharing is expanded among both internal and potentially external agencies. Security concerns are expanded when questions of infrastructure multi-tenancy, network access to hosted applications (Software as a Service / SaaS), and governance of authentication and authorization raise questions on end user trust of the cloud provider.

A move to cloud computing is often associated with data center consolidation initiatives within both governments and large organizations. Cloud delivery models, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) support the development of virtual data centers.

While it is clear long term target architectures for most organizations will be an environment with a single data system, in the short term it may be more important to decommission high risk server closets and unmanaged servers into a centralized, well-managed data center environment offering on-demand access to compute, storage, and network resources – as well as BCDR options.

Even at the most basic level of considering IaaS and PaaS as a replacement environment to physical infrastructure, the benefits to the organization may become quickly apparent. If the organization establishes a “cloud first” policy to force consolidation of inefficient or high risk ICT resources, and that environment further aligns the organization through the use of standardized IT components, the ultimate goal of reaching interoperability or some level of data integration will become much easier, and in fact a natural evolution.

Nearly all major ICT-related hardware and software companies are re-engineering their product development to either drive cloud computing, or be cloud-aware. Microsoft has released their Office 365 suite of online and hosted environments, as has Google with both PaaS and SaaS tools such as the Google Apps Engine and Google Docs.

The benefits of organizations considering a move to hosted environments, such as MS 365, are based on access to a rich set of applications and resources available on-demand, using a subscription model – rather than licensing model, offering a high level of standardization to developers and applications.

Users comfortable with standard office automation and productivity tools will find the same features in a SaaS environment, while still being relieved of individual software license costs, application maintenance, or potential loss of resources due to equipment failure or theft. Hosted applications also allow a persistent state, collaborative real-time environment for multi-users requiring access to documents or projects. Document management and single source data available for reuse by applications and other users, reporting, and performance management becomes routine, reducing the potential and threat of data corruption.

The shortfalls, particularly for governments, is that using a large commercial cloud infrastructure and service provider such as Microsoft may require physically storing data in location outside of their home country, as well as forcing data into a multi-tenant environment which may not meet security requirements for organizations.

Cloud computing offers an additional major feature at the SaaS level that will benefit nearly all organizations transitioning to a mobile workforce. SaaS by definition is platform independent. Users access SaaS applications and underlying data via any device offering a network connection, and allowing access to an Internet-connected address through a browser. The actual intelligence in an application is at the server or virtual server, and the user device is simply a dumb terminal displaying a portal, access point, or the results of a query or application executed through a command at the user screen.

Cloud computing continues to develop as a framework and toolset for meeting business objectives. Cloud computing is well-suited to respond to rapidly changing business and organizational needs, as the characteristics of on-demand access to infrastructure resources, rapid elasticity, or the ability to provision and de-provision resources as needed to meet processing and storage demand, and organization’s ability to measure cloud computing resource use for internal and external accounting mark a major change in how an organization budgets ICT.

As cloud computing matures, each organization entering a technology refresh cycle must ask the question “are we in the technology business, or should we concentrate our efforts and budget in efforts directly supporting realizing objectives?” If the answer is the latter, then any organization should evaluate outsourcing their ICT infrastructure to an internal or commercial cloud service provider.

It should be noted that today most cloud computing IaaS service platforms will not support migration of mainframe applications, such as those written for a RISC processor. Those application require redevelopment to operate within an Intel-compatible processing environment.

Broadband Factor

Cloud computing components are currently implemented over an Internet Protocol network. Users accessing SaaS application will need to have network access to connect with applications and data. Depending on the amount of graphics information transmitted from the host to an individual user access terminal, poor bandwidth or lack of broadband could result in an unsatisfactory experience.

In addition, BCDR requires the transfer of potentially large amounts of data between primary and backup locations. Depending on the data parsing plan, whether mirroring data, partial backups, full backups, or live load balancing, data transfer between sites could be restricted if sufficient bandwidth is not available between sites.

Cloud computing is dependent on broadband as a means of connecting users to resources, and data transfer between sites. Any organization considering implementing cloud computing outside of an organization local area network will need to fully understand what shortfalls or limitations may result in the cloud implementation not meeting objectives.

The Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI)

Governments and other organizations are entering a technology refresh cycle based on existing ICT hardware and software infrastructure hitting the end of life. In addition, as the world aggressively continues to break down national and technical borders, the need for organizations to reconsider the creation, use, and management of data supporting both mission critical business processes, as well as decision support systems will drive change.

Given the clear direction industry is taking to embrace cloud computing services, as well as the awareness existing siloed data structures within many organizations would better serve the organization in a service-oriented framework, it makes sense to consider an integrated approach.

A SOCCI considers both, adding reference models and frameworks which will also add enterprise architecture models such as TOGAF to ultimately provide a broad, mature framework to support business managers and IT managers in their technology and business refresh planning process.

SOCCIs promote the use of architectural building blocks, publication of external interfaces for each application or data source developed, single source data, reuse of data and standardized application building block, as well as development and use of enterprise service buses to promote further integration and interoperability of data.

A SOCCI will look at elements of cloud computing, such as virtualized and on-demand compute/storage resources, and access to broadband communications – including security, encryption, switching, routing, and access as a utility. The utility is always available to the organization for use and exploitation. Higher level cloud components including PaaS and SaaS add value, in addition to higher level entry points to develop the ICT tools needed to meet the overall enterprise architecture and service-orientation needed to meet organizational needs.

According to the Open Group a SOCCI framework provides the foundation for connecting a service-oriented infrastructure with the utility of cloud computing. As enterprise architecture and interoperability frameworks continue to gain in value and importance to organizations, this framework will provide additional leverage to make best use of available ICT tools.

The Bottom Line on ICT Modernization

The Internet Has reached nearly every point in the world, providing a global community functioning within an always available, real-time communications infrastructure. University and primary school graduates are entering the workforce with social media, SaaS, collaboration, and location transparent peer communities diffused in their tacit knowledge and experience.

This environment has greatly flattened any leverage formerly developed countries, or large monopoly companies have enjoyed during the past several technology and market cycles.

An organization based on non-interoperable or standardized data, and no BCDR protection will certainly risk losing a competitive edge in a world being created by technology and data aware challengers.

Given the urgency organizations face to address data security, continuity of operations, agility to respond to market conditions, and operational costs associated with traditional ICT infrastructure, many are looking to emerging technology frameworks such as cloud computing to provide a model for planning solutions to those challenges.

Cloud computing and enterprise architecture frameworks provide guidance and a set of tools to assist organizations in providing structure, and infrastructure needed to accomplish ICT modernization objectives.

John Savageau’s Profile

John Savageau is a life long telecom and Internet geek, with a deep interest in the environment and all things green. Whether drilling into the technology of human communications, or describing a blue whale off Catalina Island, Savageau will try to present complex ideas in terms that are easily appreciated and understood.

John Savageau is President of Pacific-Tier Communications based in Honolulu, Hawaii
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